


Ohana Means Family

by wizaad



Category: Scorpion (TV 2014)
Genre: Angst, F/M, Fluff, Gen, Im just a devoted fan who is dead inside, Imagines, Smut? Idk, and friends, and stuff like that, oneshots, thanks Nick Wootton
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-08-17
Updated: 2017-08-17
Packaged: 2018-09-27 01:37:07
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 6
Words: 4,941
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9944573
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/wizaad/pseuds/wizaad
Summary: Short stuff that's too short to pass as actual one-shots so here I am, in all my unmotivated glory...or lack thereof. Enjoy.





	1. Confusion Amongst Clarity

**Author's Note:**

> She wouldn't exactly call it a prominent memory, not if every memory appears that way. It was, however, one of the last nights she spent at home.

This dollhouse has no lights. You wouldn't give a real person a house with no lights. Her dad has some fairy lights in the garage... she's been walking for seventeen months now and he barely pays attention to her at this time of night anymore. Too busy with that foul-smelling bottle. Crying.

Why does her daddy cry when she doesn't? Nothing's hurt for a while now. Not capable of feeling very much at all, of expressing feelings even if they're fake. She thinks a lot about everything, though. She thinks that maybe she could slip in and out of the garage before her daddy has the chance to pour himself another drink. He must like it to drink so much, though it makes him act a little funny.

Christmas decorations, kept in three different cardboard boxes. One for the artificial tree, another for decorations for the artificial tree, and the third for all the lights. He's got them labelled, and though she understands lights as as something tangible, fixable, applicable, she's not up with her reading skills.

Resolving to checking the boxes one by one until she finds what she needs, she leans forward on her tippy toes and flips the box open. A furry branch flies up and whacks her in the face.

"Wrong," she mutters.

Opening another box, she sees black and pine-green cord wrapped up in great heaps and insufferable tangles. Reaching in, seeing that it's far too long for her little dolls house, she frowns into the box.

She hears her name. Her daddy's calling her. Wondering where she's at. It all means nothing to her, - whether she acknowledges him or not - because this house isn't all that big, and he'll find her eventually. In fact, if he's smart, the garage would be the first place he'd check.

She thinks she might love him. Or if not that, maybe appreciates him, is grateful, or something. She feels blamed and she doesn't know why. But she also feels relied on, like he's a house and she's his foundations. Maybe she thinks she doesn't need him. Maybe she doesn't. She knows who she is, but she doesn't know who he is past his first name.

She's aware that there's something missing in their lives. She's aware that things were different before she arrived and now things'll never be the same. Maybe every two year old goes through this? She just wants to know when the remembering will wear off. When she'll stop recalling every second of everyday in the moments before she goes to sleep at night. Dreaming about a year ago, or catching a glimpse of a beautiful woman who she knows she's supposed to have but doesn't.

"Happy, honey. What're you doing in the Christmas boxes?"

He asks knowing she could answer but won't. She's well capable of articulating herself, maybe even better than he'll ever know, but she doesn't use that voice of hers. She knows it's nothing out of passivity and isn't even aggressive and he knows the same.

But there he goes with the slurred words. Does every adult speak incompetently at night? If so, she doesn't want to see herself become older.

"I know you like to do the wiring on your dollhouse, sweetie, but I don't want you getting hurt."

Doesn't he? He definitely doesn't know about the burns on her hands from trying to navigate the matches last week, then. Friction fascinates her. So does everything else in this room.

She feels large hands gently lifting her under her arms, and then she's in the air. If she knew how to say _get your mitts off me_ , she'd say it.

He keeps on doing this. Preventing her from doing the wiring and when she slips his mind for long enough, undoes it from her dollhouse. She doesn't know why she can't just do what she wants if it interests her... and why he's got a say in how she occupies herself.

Maybe she resents him. Maybe she's confused. Maybe not, though.

 


	2. To Have and to Hold

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Post 2x13. I've had this for a while and I don't know, everyone's opinions on the whole Quintis-sharing-a-tent thing is so angsty, and I just don't believe that it was at all like that. So... voila :)

Ralph wanted to share a tent with Sylvester, even after Cabe's warnings of the latter's snoring issues, to which the younger genius shrugged off the notion that Sylvester would sleep by himself because of something beyond his control. It directly contradicts why they're all together on this roof in the first place.

So Cabe bunks with Walter, and Paige gladly takes a tent for herself. Leaving just Toby and Happy.

She had asked him to share a tent with her, and while he never verbally agreed to it, they both knew what his answer was always going to be. And as the night drags on, as the fire in the centre reduces to merely a smoulder, and when everyone else had retreated to their tents they find themselves alone, but not uncomfortably so.

 _We should probably go to sleep now_ , - the words teeter off the edge of both their tongues, yet neither could bring themselves to say it. For him, it wasn't that he was afraid she'd changed her mind, it was that he knew she hadn't, and that even if they were to sit out here in the open for rest of the night, he'd owe another night to her - and she wouldn't let him off with any luck. He grins to himself.

In her mind, she's _so_ ready for this. The part of her that wants to run gnaws ruthlessly at her, and if she listened, at this point, it's absolutely only delaying the inevitable. If this man has to put his life on the line to prove his worth to her once more, she doesn't know if there'll be anything left of him to accept. And that scares her more.

"You know," she says, raking her mind for anything to say, her heart constricting when in her peripheral, she sees him angle his head, offering his complete and undivided attention, "those snowballs did shit all for my core temperature."

He laughs, and so does she. Was that even a hint? She doesn't actually know. She doesn't even know why she said it - but it was the best thing she could come up with after searching every star in the sky for something to say. Their mutual silence may not have been thick with discomfort or awkwardness or shyness, but her entire being was dripping with thought, and she might have exploded if she left anything unsaid for any longer.

"Well, combating cold with cold isn't exactly going to help, Hap. But we still had fun, didn't we?"

There was a lilt in his voice and she liked it. It made her smile at her clasped hands which rested on her thighs. "Oh, yeah. Watching you get totalled by an eleven year old is a sight for sore eyes."

"Kid's got aim," he admits, scooting a little closer, "I'm glad Paige did this."

She wonders if anyone else is awake, listening to them. Despite that, she sighs, dropping her head onto his shoulder - pleased that he immediately responds with an arm wrapped around her waist. This is probably what bliss feels like, and she hasn't felt this since they danced. She wonders if it's a coincidence.

"Doc?"

"Hm?"

She hesitates. "What are we?"

He's silent for a beat, not quite sure what she means. He could say _I'm a world-class shrink, and you're a hot engineer that for some wild reason wants to spend time with me_ , but he knows that's not really the answer she's looking for. It occurs to him that she referred to them as 'we', as in plural - and his mind briefly short circuits.

"Us?" He asks, an absurd amount of hope in his voice. If he were anybody else, it would be embarrassing that he could make himself sound so desperate. It doesn't even dawn on him. He wants this - and if she doesn't see that by now, well...

"You make us sound like a couple," she says, but he detects no grimace in her voice, and that's a win...he thinks.

"Aren't we?"

"Are we?"

He thinks she might have literally just placed the ball in his court, and that should scare him, considering he thought that this was all on her terms.

"Yes," he says. No going back now.

To his surprise, her response is to take another contented breath, and adjust herself closer into his side. The fire may be dying, but something inside of him is igniting unsolicited, and he can only hope she's feeling the same.

"Good," she finally says.

It's no secret that he's been waiting for this day for what feels like his whole life, and he's imagined what it would be like to call her his a thousand times, but he never thought it would feel like this. He expected to be jumping for joy, or to scream into the night until the excitement dissipated. Instead, all he feels is relief.

"Come on," she says, finally coming to a stand. "I'm tired and you made a promise to warm me up."

He takes her hand when she offers it and stands up, all the while grinning like a madman. Half completely blissful, and half dumbfounded that those words left Happy Quinn's lips, and were directed at him. He follows stupidly behind as she drags him toward the tent by his hand in such a way that it makes him think that her condition of "no hanky-panky" has just been aggressively swept off the table.

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I hope you enjoyed this :) I don't mind if people leave suggestions in the comments for the next chapter. Contrary to popular belief, I am highly unmotivated.


	3. Tin Man, Tin Woman

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Happy's having a pre-marital breakdown. Walter is there to help.

Paige warned her about this. Even if she wasn't her maid of honour, the liaison could still sense Happy's nerves - and was the only one who was brave enough to approach her about it.

It all hit her exactly four days before the wedding. Toby, Walter and Cabe were on a small job. Paige and Sly were grocery shopping. She was all by herself in the garage when it occurred to her that she hadn't actually written her vows yet. This wasn't something she could just hand off to her dudes of honour - and even if she could, nobody in their right minds would ever leave those guys to come up her wedding vows.

She's not so sure about the subject of anxiety, or at least she doesn't think she is, but the wedding went from being an abstract concept to _ohmygodthisisactuallyhappening_ in the few seconds it took for her to rummage through her desk and find a notebook.

The reality of being a married woman pummels down on her like it just started raining bricks. She thought she was too independent for marriage. She thought she was too damaged for marriage. Then she met Toby and all of a sudden she needed somebody, like her life - no, her life _did_ depend on it.

But she didn't need Paige to tell her that she was going to be so nervous that she could practically feel every fibre of her being trying to crawl its way out of her body. And she's done writing her vows. When Paige and Sylvester got back, Happy was sitting in a dazed state with a blank notebook in front of her. And that's when Toby's best ma'am broke the news to her.

_You_ _think_ _the_ _nerves_ _are_ _bad_ _now?_ She had asked playfully. _Try_ _feeling_ _like_ _that_ _times_ _ten_ _added_ _with_ _the_ _emotions_ _of_ _twenty_ _women_ _on_ _their_ _period_. _The_ _moments_ _before_ _you_ _walk_ _down_ _the_ _aisle_ are _gonna_ _suck_ , _but_ _it's_ _gonna_ _be_ _so_ _worth_ _it._

Well, it's just under twenty minutes before she has to make her way up to the roof and she's standing in Walter's loft and she feels like she's going to explode. She's going to explode so big and evaporate into the air and Los Angeles is going to rain Happy Hormones for the next six months. Her bridesdudes are going to be here any minute now after running 'one final errand', and they're going to be well-dressed and it's all going to be for her and Toby.

"Wow, Happy, you look... great."

She's surprised to realise that it was Walter. She whirls around as gracefully as she can in a gown and heels in time to see Walter give her a careful once over. He's wearing a suit and he just complimented her appearance and she has absolutely no idea what to say.

So she looks down at herself, smiling shyly. "Uh, thanks, Walt. You too." And it occurs to her that she was being honest. She watches him take a step closer and this moment is absolutely surreal, and for somebody with an eidetic memory...was it appropriate to say she would never forget this?

"Cabe and Sly should be back any minute." He tells her, and his eyes slightly light up. "Oh, I almost forgot. Paige reminded me to ask you how you're holding up."

"Well, _are_ you asking me?"

He rolls his eyes at himself in amusement, then nods.

She flops onto the edge of his bed. "I think I'm going to die. Really and truly."

She practically sees the gears in his head turning, as he fights to respond with a 'Paige told me you might say that'.

"I know you don't like being the centre of attention, not even around us - your...your family. We," he sighs, sitting across from her, "we aren't good with our emotions, you and I. It's killing me to talk to you like this, but it's in my job description as dude of honour," his eyes flick upwards and he's pleased to see that she's smiling tinily, "and you're about to marry Toby. That's all that matters today. Nobody else."

She laughs when she feels the tears spring to her eyes again. "God, Walt. What happened to us?"

"I don't know," he says, eyes casting to the floor. "I hope it was a good thing, though."

She nods. He knows exactly what happened to this team. Which reminds her, "speaking of good thing, what's going on with you and Paige, while you're in an honest mood?"

He tips his head back. "Ah, why is everyone in speculation that we're together just because we're close again?"

"You could be closer," She comments.

"Last time I tried that, she ended up dating a SEAL for nearly an entire year."

She frowns. "You know, Toby also _really_ screwed us up the first time round, and it took us a year to mend _that_. And then he found out that you were my husband. Now look at us. That's the life of a relationship, dude."

She has to stand up, because she's getting fidgety again. He follows suit.

"Happy?"

She turns around again. "Yeah?"

"Thank you. You- you've always been there for me, and at times I'm not so sure why you done the things you've done for me because... I'm a lot to handle. You're the first person after my sister to not...to not give up on me."

She's not sure she's ever felt so much affection for Walter O'Brien but right now it's enough for her to step forward and envelope him in a hug. It's odd to think of your ex-husband as a brother, she thinks. But since when was this little family of theirs conventional at all?

It's a strange thing to want to hug Walter, stranger to actually do it, but the most perplexing thing is that he reciprocates.

She hears the stairs creaking under footsteps, and pulls away just in time to see Cabe grinning at her. "I er... brought you a little wedding gift."

Patrick is just behind him, wearing a suit and a smile.

 

 

 

 


	4. Existential Victory Dance

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> I don't know what you would call this... a post-3x22 prediction fic? 
> 
> I know it's strange to try and predict what happens after the events of Plight on Mars if they haven't even happened yet... but maybe it won't end up being a POST-ep fic ;)

She doesn't wake up with a start. Not exactly. There had been a moment between opening her eyes and realising to her disappointment that Toby wasn't next to her that consciousness began to hit her. Was it odd that something felt amiss, if it was only their first night officially living together?

Groggy confusion, she knows, is worse than regular confusion. Sifting through muddled thoughts. Where's Toby? And then, her eyes widen a little bit, irritated that they refuse to adjust to the blackness.

Where's Toby?

_Go find him._

She could leave him to his own devices. If he needed her, he'd wake her up. Wouldn't he? He was supposed to be the open and honest person in this relationship, but that's not the case anymore. It can't be. From now on, her moods were his moods and every choice she makes impacts him, and vice versa.

There are no secrets anymore. Which is probably why at - she glances at the alarm clock - 3am, the only thing beside her is cold sheets.

She sits up, leans back against the headboard, and sighs. It's only their first night living together and after a fairly crappy case, too. They barely got all of Toby's boxes through the door, let alone begun to unpack them, and 'Toby Dick' is propped up between the couch and coffee table in the living room. _Their_ living room. That's the thought that's kicking her ass.

And it's probably doing the same to Toby.

She can't help but grin to herself. God, they're both suffering in silence. Who'd have thought, honestly, when each other was all they ever wanted, they'd got it, and now they're sitting on opposite sides of the house with absolutely no idea what to do with it. She's got nobody to turn to who can empathise with her except for Toby. She could ask Paige, but while she and Drew 'lived together', he wasn't around enough to tell the tale. And Happy was never one to intentionally open a can of worms.

Defeated, she tears the covers from her body, forgetting she's in nothing but his Harvard shirt until the cool stillness of the night clings to her bare legs, and she carefully swings them out of bed, feeling plush carpet beneath her feet.

She knew where to find him. He kept commenting on how nice the view was out of the front window because the weather had been so nice that day. Of course. He loved nothing more than to stare at lovely things and become a slave to his thoughts.

And it only slightly terrifies her that she's right. She's never known anybody as well. Familiarity was only something she used to scold herself for fantasising over. It all had seemed like a lost cause, but right now, she's standing a few feet behind her fiancé who is staring out of _their_ window. It all made her a little giddy.

She doesn't often get the chance to appreciate him - to really appreciate his physique. Through a grey t-shirt and plaid pyjama pants, he's skinny as hell but he's built sturdy.

She takes a couple of steps towards him, placing a hand on his lower back, standing beside him, surprised to find that he doesn't jump. He probably knew she was there. Damn it.

"You think way too loudly, Doc."

His short exhale is in amusement. He wraps his arm around her shoulders, pulling her in a little closer.

"So do you," he says, and her eyes flick up to see his grin, "I could hear the gears turning in your head from all the way down the hall."

Did he know she would seek him out, too? This could all just be Toby looking for attention - she wouldn't put it past him, - but then again...

"Seriously. What's on your mind? Am I gonna have to haul your ass back to bed at 3am _every_ night, or..."

She didn't expect that his reply would be to kiss her. A surprised yelp erupts from the back of her throat, though she's able to recover, placing her hands on his chest to steady herself. Despite a spur of the moment start, he slows down, barely grazing the curve of her hips with his fingers.

If this was his plan all along, it was working. She slides up a hand to cup his jaw, kissing him deeply, then moves her hand back down to his chest and gently pushes so that his lips only barely break contact with hers.

"What was that for?" She whispers, slightly breathless. Their faces less than an inch apart, he presses his forehead against hers, grinning like a complete idiot.

"I didn't know how else to tell you I love you without making it sound so blasé." he says, bringing his hands up from her waist to cover them over her own, still planted firmly on his chest. "I don't want you to ever think that I take us for granted."

"You're such a sap," she says, "what are you doing out of bed?"

"Reality check."

"Does reality live up to your fantasies?"

He looks around, grinning again. "It's my fantasies that don't live up to reality, if I'm being honest here."

She pauses. "And you had to drag us out of bed to have an existential crisis?"

"Not an existential crisis," he defends, grabbing her hands before pulling away slightly, "an existential victory dance! I have everything I could ever want standing right in front of me, and that's a lot coming from someone who thought they'd die surrounded by paintings of their marine counterparts."

She laughs. "We're not keeping Toby Dick."

Glancing at the spot above the fireplace, he winks at her. "Keep telling yourself that, sweetheart. You think I don't know how to wear you down by now?"

She rolls her eyes, but the glint never leaves them. "I think that you better start getting used to this whole living together thing so that you can come back to bed." She says, tugging at his hands. He gets the hint, biting his lip in an act of futility to suppress his ever growing grin. He begins to follow her lead, and she never lets go of his hand.

He almost becomes too giddy to handle the thought that, yep, this was going to become his life. Her, every day. And though he may say it's something he could definitely get used to, he doesn't think he ever will.

 

 

 


	5. Broken Brilliance

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> A day inside the head of five year old Happy Quinn.

She can appreciate the physics behind the ticking of a clock, how the second hand will always tiptoe around the perimeter at exactly the same speed and distance, second by second and without fail until the day it dies of being so overworked by time itself. The second hand doesn't envy the minute or hour hand - their ability to do the same work but do less of it and at a slower pace, in fact, the hands on a clock are personified only by their name, made out of plastic and if they're lucky, out of metal, and are ultimately inanimate objects that are controlled by other inanimate objects.

She can appreciate it, and the correlation between sound and colour, where the ticking is audible only because it originates as a vibration that seamlessly transitions into a sound wave - and if it weren't for her body being gifted with eardrums, the vibration would be lost in time. Which is kind of ironic.

To appreciate it is to respect it, she thinks, and nothing more. She can appreciate other things, too. She can appreciate how couples will walk into the room and browse the selection of children as if in a grocery store. It's not their fault. Happiness is a mutual need between fathers and mothers and sons and daughters.

No, of course it isn't their fault. They want a baby that they can keep a secret from - not a growing child who will always know that they were once a reject and would probably always feel like one. Parents can't deal with the guilt. And the truth is, when she hears the ticking of the clock in the playroom, it's not so much a physical marvel as it is a painful reminder that she's getting older. Parents don't want that.

She remembers exactly the day that she became unwanted. It wasn't even the day he left her at St. Luke's. It wasn't when she watched him drive away in his red truck. It wasn't on her first visiting day that she was carefully glossed over like some kind of out-of-date yogurt.

It was before all that. It was before she lived in a cage and was only let out at feeding time.

She's not stupid. _She's not stupid_. And he didn't keep her for long enough to realise that. Or maybe he did, but he had to do something before _she_ realised, in all her lack of stupidity, that he didn't have the tools to care for somebody so high-maintenance. After all, wasn't she just a piece of machinery? Composed of cells and muscles in place of nuts and bolts and skin for sheet iron, a brain in place of a motherboard; a heart in place of an engine.

She thought, maybe, though he couldn't perform on her with the tools in his garage meant for all those things, that these human counterparts are not counterparts at all, that there was never a time that she could be described as a robot.

But there was never a time that she didn't feel like one. Which is a little ironic, if thought about in comparison with each other.

One thing that robots and humans share is that they serve a purpose. Whether that is to transfer a box of cookies from one conveyer belt to another or to be nice to customers to score extra tips; whether it's to permanently ink somebody's skin or be the one manning the needle. Whether it's to store a child's name on an ever growing list of unwanted children, or to be that child, living your life in competition with that entire list. Forced to be nice and not get into fights with your competition. Like muzzled pit bulls in the ring being held back by the collar, holding back from snapping, knowing that if they do, they won't be allowed to fight anymore.

She'll pretend she's strong in order to fool the clerks and customers. She'll pretend she's strong until the day a red truck with a dented fender pulls up outside. Then, she'll pretend she's even stronger when she spends the rest of her life wondering why, for all those years, she wasn't good enough to keep around. Maybe she was broken machinery and these people would fix her and make her good enough for him.

She would be on her best behaviour like they taught her. She would even  suppress her anger for him. _She would even suppress her anger for him._


	6. Slow and Steady Wins the...

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Post 1x01 "Pilot"

The game ended with Ralph's race car crossing the finish line, mere seconds before Walters. Ralph smiled, knowing that adults usually let young children win at games like these to make them feel good, but also knowing by Walters facial expression that that had not been the case.

He always owned two controllers for his gaming console. Minus, of course, the times that he challenged himself to use both simultaneously to practice his ambidexterity, neither had ever really been used at the same time. He enjoyed having someone to play with him that wasn't his mother, as he had spent more time teaching her _how_ to play rather than actually playing _with_ her. He found it odd that he would have to teach her every time she wanted to play, since he doesn't think he's ever had to have been shown something twice, but he's not oblivious to the fact that it's one of the only instances where he talks to her in full sentences.

"You're good at this," Walter said, smiling. "I take it that you play often."

Ralph shrugged one shoulder, staring straight ahead at the TV screen. "Yeah."

Walter turned his head to see Paige, a hand lightly touching her collarbone, the other hugging her body. She was biting her lip and her hair was tied back, her bangs hanging loosely around her face.

It was one of the first times that he had thought somebody who was essentially a stranger was beautiful.

"I should..." He began, standing up, setting the controller on the couch and dusting nonexistent lint off his pants, "I should probably go. Thank you for your time, Paige. I'll see you soon. Oh, and I'm going to need, uh...you're phone number."

Paige smiled a toothless smile, shaking her head in amusement at him. It left him a little speechless, so he just smiled back. He watched her disappear into the kitchen and come back with a yellow sticky note, and proceeded to stick it to his outstretched palm. Clenching it with uncertainty, he dared a glance into her eyes.

"Thank you." he said, then turned to the boy again. "Ralph," he said with a nod. "I'll see you, too. You both can come by the garage tomorrow, whenever you can. The guys and I will, uh, show you around. I'll text you the address."

"The garage?" Paige asked.

"Yes, that is where we operate. I hope to be out of there in a while, though. Buy a real headquarters for Scorpion." He pauses, glancing around the condo. "I look forward to working with you both. Goodnight."

Paige watched as Walter let himself out. She turned to Ralph, who was staring at the TV screen. An imaginary camera was panning over an imaginary, CGI'd racetrack. The music that signified Ralph's victory had died down. Placing a tentative hand on her sons shoulder, she whispered gently that he was to go back to bed, as it was a school night. He stood wordlessly, turning off the console and the TV, before obeying his mother.

 

 

**Author's Note:**

> Hi, thank you for reading. Obviously, this is the first chapter. I don't know why exactly I chose to write this particular thing though. I hope you enjoyed, at least :)


End file.
